Prof. dr. Giaccardi, E.

Biography

Elisa Giaccardi is Professor and Chair of Interactive Media Design at Delft University of Technology, where she leads the Connected Everyday Lab (www.connectedeverydaylab.org). From pioneering work in meta-design and participatory technology to the role of the non-human in a more-than-human world, her research reflects an ongoing concern with design as a shared process of invention of reality and a fascination for the role that technology can play. Currently, she is focusing her work on thing-centred design, a novel design framework and methodology that helps designers move past the blind spots of human-centered design in a “more-than-human” world. Thing-centred design looks at artifacts as co-performers of practice next to humans, and thus as potential co-researchers and co-designers in the design process. In addition to academic research, Elisa works with companies and consulting firms to explore how thing-centred design canoffer additional resources to human imagination and capabilities in the context of design practice.

Elisa was the recipient of a Delft Technology Fellowship for top female scientists (2012-2016), and she is currently Ambassador and co-Principle Investigator of the Amsterdam Metropolitan Solutions (AMS) Institute, a research collaboration between the City of Amsterdam, Delft University of Technology and MIT. She is also one of the core members of Delft Women in Science (DEWIS), a campus-wide network committed to gender diversity, gender quality and gender awareness.

A TEDx and frequent keynote speaker, Elisa’s interdisciplinary background successfully brings together humanities, digital media and interaction design. She has strong teaching and collaborative research experience in a variety of international contexts (from Europe to the United States) and disciplinary settings (from humanities to computer science to design). She regularly lectures and publishes in international journals and at leading conferences for design research, interaction design and human-computer interaction, and has been the recipient of several scholarships and research grants (including EU and NSF). She has served as an expert reviewer for the US National Science Foundation, the National Research Council Canada, and the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO). She has served as Forum Editor for ACM Interactions from 2010 to 2016, and has recently been elected to the steering committee of Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) - ACM flagship conference for interaction design research - in reason of her sustained and influential contribution to the field.

Education

2003PhD, School of Computing, Communications, and Electronics,University of Plymouth, UK (Examining Board’s Special Mention). Dissertation title: Principles of Metadesign: Processes and Levels of Co-Creation in the New Design Space